34 sion (to borrow a phrase from a college paper of mine ), a lot like the experience of reading Proust. You begin hopeful- ly you dream of new vistas of pleasure opening up before you, you think that your friends will think better of you for having done it, you follow each twist and turn and try to find the big picture, and then you get bogged down and the whole thing seems to go on forever. It's a depressing thought, but we may al- ready be living in Combray. . . Theremin, Theremin T HE reason this story is called "Theremin, Theremin" is that right now, here, it's Theremin, all Theremin, and nothing but Theremin. Theremin the literary reference, The- remin the object, Theremin the evoca- tion of the ancient avant-garde. But let's describe Steve Martin. No, not the comedian but the tall, red- haired man, resident of quarters high up in Battery Park City. He is thirty- five years old, and is standing in front of the theremin in his apartment. Steve is wearing Levi's and white Converse sneakers. The theremin is wearing a dull, slightly scratched walnut veneer, and looks a little like a nineteen-thirties radio. It has two antennas: one antenna stands up straight on top of the ve- neered body, and the other, a loop of meta] parallel to the floor, juts out from the left side of the body. You'll have to excuse us for writing this piece in this flowing manner, but we are trying to give you an idea of how the theremin is played. This is a still point. You can produce one with a theremin: you can hold a note forever. We won't try that, but it's something to remember. The theremin is the only musical instrument that plays without being touched. This gets us back to the whole modernisme idea. Here is a quotation from the Musical ilmerica of February 4, 1928: THEREMIN SHOWS PUBLIC HIS ETHER MUSIC Professor Leon Theremin of Russia gave the first public American demonstration of his so-called ether wave music in the Met- ropolitan Opera House last Tuesday night. . . . The program was the same presented _ at a private exhibition for invited guests at the Hotel Plaza a week earlier. On Wednesday evening Prof. Theremin gave another private demonstration before a group of scientists and other celebrities at the home of Brigadier-General and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. . . . Professor Theremin, in a leaflet, thus explained the working of his apparatus. . . But we think that Steve Martin, standing behind his 1929 RCA there- min, should explain the working of the apparatus. Here goes. Mr. Martin says to us, "Sit in the Stratolounger now. Are you ready?" Then he says, "What you see before you is one of about two hundred origi- nal theremins. It has two antennae: the horizontal antenna regulates the vol- ume, the vertical antenna regulates the pitch. The human body becomes a ca- pacitor and interrupts the electromag- netic field, which regulates the entire sound. I will now demonstrate." This is the spot in this piece where Steve Martin plays the theremin. He moves his hands, and so forth. Now is the right time to tell you that you have heard a theremin if you saw the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" or if you listened to the Beach Boys song "Good Vibrations." Now is also the right time to quote an enthusiastic mu- sic critic named Lawrence Gilman, who believed that the theremin ought to be called the Theremophone, and who in 1928 asked rhetorically, "Since it was the invention of the pianoforte that made possible the keyboard music of Chopin and Debussy. . . is it impos- sible that the invention of the There- mophone may give us some day a mu- sic of which we cannot even dream?" "I t gets louder as I raise my left hand," Steve Martin says. "The pitch becomes higher as I move my hand closer to the pole. You'll also notice that I'm providing all the vibrato, by moving my hand back and forth." The theremin was designed in 1918, a few years after the vacuum tube was invented. Mr. Martin thinks of 1918 as a less cynical time, when people had interesting dreams for the future. Another great living fan of the there- . SEPTEMBER 17, 1990 min is Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog synthesizer. There is a big issue right there, Mr. Martin says. The question is: Do we use electronic technology to simulate the sounds of existing instruments, or do we try to produce new music? THE NICEST MOMENT: The nicest moment we had while we were talking with Mr. Martin about the theremin was one in which he jumped up and put on "Good Vibrations" at top volume. When the Beach Boys sang "I'm pick- ing up good vibrations, she's giving me excitations," we could really hear the theremin; moreover, we got the idea that Brian Wilson, who wrote the mu- sic, was in well-earned communion with the inventor of the theremin (and whatever hope he had for his machine). Brian Wilson was all by himself. Lennon and McCartney had each other. THEREMIN THE LITERARY REFER- ENCE: This part of the story involves the famous novel "Marjorie Morning- star," by the famous novelist Herman W ouk. Here are two paragraphs from Chapter 35, "The Breaking of a Glass": SCREEEEEEEEEE! A frightful sound blared through the apartment. Marjorie shivered from head to foot, and screamed at Schwartz over the noise, "My God! What's that?" Almost at once the screech changed into a mixed hideous din, as of a zoo going up in flames-growls, squeals, shrieks, barks, groans, howls. The guests in the dIning room, their eyes dilated with astonishment, swarmed toward the foyer, carrying Marjorie and Schwartz with them. . . . The three Packovitch girls were bound- ing and prancing like circus elephants, trumpeting with laughter, poking their hands at the pole and the loop; and with every motion of their hands the noise of the theremin changed. It whooped, it grunted, it screeched, it howled, it belched.. . . In the middle of the room, Marsha lay on her stomach on the floor, with her hat over one ear, beating the rug with her fists, kicking her heels, and laughing as though she would die. THEREMIN THE DETECTIVE STORY: When Steve Martin told his friend Victoria Traube that he wanted to find a theremin, find out about the there- min, find someone who could play the theremin, get a look at a theremin, Miss Traube thought, I didn't think this was going to come up. Miss Traube is a vice-president, and the head of East Coast motion-picture- business affairs, of the International